Hansard

Presiding Officer,

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

That strikes me as an unfair quote to use in a debate such as this, so I will not use it. However, it was my way of responding to Iain Gray’s point that sometimes people think that consensual debates are dull. In fact, I have learned a lot by listening to a variety of members across the chamber during the debate.

I thank Mark McDonald for his observations about Hugh Henry and Robert Brown. By the powers of Facebook, I let Robert Brown know that he had been commended in a debate by a Scottish National Party minister in a subsequent Government for the work that he had done in a previous ministerial life, and he was suitably impressed. Mark McDonald will probably get a Christmas card this year—I have no doubt that it will be one of many.

Like Liz Smith, I reflect that an awful lot of work has gone into adoption over much time, involving many politicians of different hues, in a genuine attempt to find stronger and more positive ways forward in a challenging area of public policy. As other members have said, we all have friends and family who are adoptive parents or who have been through the adoption process. I take the opportunity to say hello to my first cousin Will and his partner, and their fantastic daughter, Monique, although they live in Canada and I am not sure whether Scottish Parliament television ever gets that far—I hope not, in many ways. The last time that I stayed with family in Canada, they told me what the adoption process was like. I wish that I had taken a few notes, because they might have been useful today.

I take the minister’s point about adoption activity days and the range of activities that have been introduced, which strike me as constructive and sensible. I hope that they have the ability to inspire many. Adoption week across Scotland and this debate are important signals and, indeed, symbols. However, Parliament must challenge signals and make the measures that have been talked about today tangible for children and young people who desperately need our help.

As other members have said, adoption provides a stable family life for children who, for whatever reason, would not necessarily have had that life with their birth parents. For parents who cannot or choose not to have children, adoption is a way of building a loving family, and for the majority of those families, adoption is successful and helps children to thrive. As any parent knows, raising a child has its challenges, and in cases of adoption those challenges can be even more difficult to overcome—especially given the lack of support services once the formal adoption papers have been signed, which members have mentioned. I take the minister’s point that he is reflecting on that and that more needs to be done. Some of that was reflected in Monica Lennon’s speech and is addressed in the Labour amendment.

Research illustrates that up to a quarter of adoptions are at risk of breaking down. By any standards, that is a worrying statistic, and in Scotland that equates to some 125 children each year being affected. That is 125 children who return to the care system, which older children would have thought that they had left for ever. We must seek to understand why that happens and take the necessary actions to address that worrying statistic.

Adoption breakdowns can have a variety of causes. Adoption UK notes that its members desperately need support services that range from guidance for parents to more help for children in schools. If those services are not being provided, we need to ask whether we are content to let some of our most vulnerable children move through life without the support that they need simply because they have ceased to be the state’s responsibility. That cannot be right.

When support is available, there is sometimes a view among parents and, sadly, among the authorities that asking for that support is a sign of weakness. One family sought support for one of their children many years after their adoption had been finalised only to be told that, if they took the request further, all three of their children would be temporarily taken from them. Unsurprisingly, that adoption subsequently broke down.

Adoptive parents must be given assurances that seeking help—we all do it in every walk of life—is in no way a sign of their being bad parents but, on the contrary, signifies that they are trying to do the best for their children. Families often adopt without a full picture of the child’s background, no matter how good the reports are, and coping with unknown challenges is immensely difficult. We must reflect on that in taking matters forward.

As Alison Johnstone just said, looked-after children tend to leave school earlier and with fewer qualifications. It is therefore right that teachers are alive to the importance of monitoring the attainment of looked-after children. However, teachers might not always be aware that a pupil is from an adoptive background, and we need to strike a balance. Few adoptive parents would want their child to be continually monitored and treated differently from their classmates—to say nothing of the view of the child themselves—as that would undo much of the work of creating a normal family life. Nevertheless, we must ensure that adopted children do not slip unintentionally through any cracks.

Providing guidance through teacher training and professional development programmes for qualified teachers could start to address the challenge. Children spend upwards of 30 hours a week at school, so it cannot be right that the needs of adopted children are not formally assessed and taken into account by their teachers. Adoption UK’s pilot project in North Berwick, which has been mentioned, includes the provision of attainment training for teachers and support staff. If we are to create a better learning environment for adopted children, the people whom we trust to teach them must be properly equipped to do their jobs.

Like others, I am conscious of the weight of requests that we make of teachers. The papers for tomorrow’s meeting of the Education and Skills Committee are full of representations from teachers on their workload in the context of scrutiny of Education Scotland and the Scottish Qualifications Authority. I am sure that Liz Smith has read those representations, too. Nonetheless, here we are in another context making yet more demands on teachers’ time when they are challenged pretty strongly by the day job as it is. This whole area must also be part of the day job, but a balance has to be struck.

The First Minister has rightly focused on the need to improve the lives of children in the care system. This adoption week has demonstrated the importance of ensuring that adopted children and their families are supported, too. The least that we owe these children—our children—is the reassurance that we will work together, through the agencies, the Government and the Parliament, to give them a stable environment to grow up in. That is the least that we can do.